


Coffee & Contemplation

by sssouthsideserpentine



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Max gives Spencer a lesson in profiling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:22:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23515366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sssouthsideserpentine/pseuds/sssouthsideserpentine
Summary: A casual coffee date turns into a lesson about profiling and attention to detail
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Maxine Brenner
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	Coffee & Contemplation

Spencer flits about his kitchen nervously, noticing the crumbs that have accumulated under the toaster and the coffee stains that riddled the too-sticky counter. Max doesn’t seem to take any notice to the pile of junk mail sitting on top of the kitchen counter, though Spencer was astonished about how she could brush it off, his detailed brain going into overdrive as he kept finding other ways to occupy his attention and his anxieties.

“Coffee?” He offers, already up and out of his chair to put on the kettle.

“ _Please_ ” Max lilts as she tucks herself into one of the thrift store chairs and pokes around the various newspapers that Spencer had read earlier that morning, thumbing around until she found a crossword puzzle with only a few spaces filled in.

“Ah, so you consider yourself to be something of a C _ruciverbalist_?” Spencer asks, feeling genuinely curious to learn more things about Maxine as this was officially their fifth coffee date (their eighth date overall and the third time that Max had been inside his apartment).

Max stops scribbling her answers down and looks at Spencer with raised eyebrows. “In laymen’s terms please?” She asks sarcastically, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. 

“Someone who is skillful in creating and solving crossword puzzles” Spencer reveals, giving her the same kind of closed-mouth smile he often gave in the instances where he thought he said too much.

“Oh god no” Max laughs, taking the steaming mug of coffee out of Spencer’s outstretched hand. Their fingers touch and Spencer can’t help but feel a jolt of electricity, though it may have been a product of him holding onto the hot ceramic for too long.

_Spencer sits next to Max, not across from her, and he wonders if that was the right choice._

The two of them had met by chance in a park one afternoon on the rare day where Spencer wasn’t working. Now, he _wasn’t_ one to believe in fate, be he knew fact. _Probability,_ he figured, as if there were some sort of mathematical equation that could account for the two of them being at the same place at the same time.

Max shifts her body towards Spencer subconsciously as she grabs for the cream and sugar. Spencer can’t help but profile her, noting all the ways in which she was signaling her trust and comfort with him: Max’s legs were crossed in the seat of the chair and she leaned close enough so Spencer could read over her shoulder, though he’d already read the whole page four times over before she had even picked up her pen again. Max tucked her hair behind her ear as she filled in the squares for thirty-two down.

“You know, I can tell when you’re thinking too hard over there” Max chuckles lightly as she eyes Spencer from her peripherals, watching as he sat up stiff as a ramrod, like he was a kid getting caught for doing something he shouldn’t have been. 

“H-how can you tell?” 

_“Are you asking me for a lesson in profiling, Dr. Reid?”_ Max raises an eyebrow at Spencer and he chuckles in response. Unlike most people who saw Spencer’s ability for long-winded rants as an annoying hindrance or a distraction, Max tended to enjoy just listening to him talk, bracing herself for whatever speech was in store for her with a sarcastic, yet adoring utterance of ‘ _The doctor’s in…’._ That’s what she called him when he was being smart like that, “The Doctor”. Maxalways felt like she learned something from Spencer, and she appreciated his abundance of knowledge (even if it’s delivery was often ill-timed). But the idea that Spencer could learn something from her barely seemed to cross Max’s mind. 

“Try it, let’s see… _SSA Brenner_ ” Spencer gets up from his chair quickly, moving to sit across the table from Max like it was an interrogation room and she was talking to an unsub. He sits up straight again and laces his fingers together, trying to look calm and cavalier but really coming across as the opposite. “ _Profile me_ ” There’s a taunting quality to Spencer’s words that makes Maxine nervous and excited at the same time. 

“Spencer Reid, if that’s even your real name!” Max starts out dramatically with a boisterous laugh, completely unsure of how Spencer and his team were able to conduct these kinds of interviews so seamlessly. 

Spencer laughs, his foot somehow finding hers under the table. He taps the toe of his well-worn shoe against hers, “C’mon, take it seriously. How are you going to get information out of this guy?” He puts on his fake-tough face and Max tries her best to collect herself. 

“I already have it.” 

Spencer raises a curious eyebrow. “You already have the information?”

_“Yup”_ Max looks smug as she gazes at Spencer from across the table. 

_“Well…”_ Spencer starts, trying to offer her a piece of useful advice but falling short. He wasn’t used to being the one in the hot seat, being profiled by a beautiful woman who kept getting more and more intriguing to him with every morsel she revealed about herself. “How do you know he’s telling the truth?” 

“Body language, the oldest tell in the book” Max reveals again, her tone even and confident and absolutely puzzling to Spencer. 

“Body language” Spencer repeats in a barely-there whisper. 

“You’ve been bouncing your knee since you sat down across from me. You weren’t doing that when you were sitting in this chair” Max gestures to the now-empty seat next to her with a sly smile before she continues. “Now that’s a nervous tick if I ever did see one. Possibly a sign of over-caffeination, but you don’t have to be in the FBI to realize that something… _or someone_ , is making you nervous”

Spencer catches himself before he can start bouncing his knee up and down again, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. “Is that it? You catch on to one nervous tick and suddenly it’s the key to the whole mystery, case closed?” Max shakes her head no. 

“Also, if you didn’t have anything to hide, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to sit up straight. Your posture is painfully proper, and Spencer, no offense, but you slouch too much” A hint of a smile plays on the corner of Max’s lips. 

_Spencer can’t seem to find a comment to make about that one._

“You do this thing when you’re thinking too hard, furrowing your eyebrows together until it looks almost painful.” Max finds herself leaning across the table, reaching an arm out to gingerly caress Spencer’s face and smooth out the wrinkle in his brow with the gentle pad of her thumb. “You’re trying to put all of the pieces together and it’s like I can hear your wheels turning but I don’t have any idea what’s going on in your head.” Max gives Spencer a sad sort of smile as she settles back into the chair across from him. 

_“Everything”_ Spencer says quietly. “Everything is going on in my head always and sometimes I don’t know how to stop it.” The sudden step towards vulnerability makes Max look up suddenly, accosted by the unabashed honesty that Spencer was giving her. 

“Well, maybe if you focus on the ‘good everything,’ the ‘bad everything’ won’t seem so scary in comparison” She shrugs. It seems easier said than done. Spencer had been working with the Behavioral Analysis Unit for over a decade and had probably seen more pain and suffering in one week than Max would see in her entire life. It was probably silly of her to think that the good could outweigh the bad and she would admit that, but she had always been a glass half-full type of person. 

“The good everything…” Spencer repeated, mulling it over like he would with a case detail, trying to pick out the patterns and the inconsistencies, trying his best to recall what stuck out to him as being important and why. “Okay I got something” 

“Hit me” Max chuckles, leaning closer to Spencer from her spot across the table. 

“When I first met you, you were wearing a light blue sweater and that little gold necklace you always wear” His hazel eyes trace over the sharp planes of her collarbones, the necklace’s gold pendant gleaming in the mid-afternoon light. “We bought soft pretzels at the park and you ordered yours with extra salt. You can never get the coffee-to-cream ratio right and that’s why you haven’t touched your coffee in approximately six minutes” 

Max laughs and pushes her too-light mug of coffee to the side, resting her chin on top of her hand as she continued to listen to Spencer.

“You always wear shoes that make you taller—“ Max goes to cut off Spencer with an explanation that he already knows, so he holds up a slender finger and continues: “When you were younger, your sister Michelle said that taller shoes would make you look more mature, and you’ve been running with that ever since.” He smiles shyly as he looks up at Max and notices the blush that was threatening to creep up her neck. 

Max knew that because of his eidetic memory, he was a very detail-oriented person, but she foolishly assumed that he used his skills the most for work or the reading he did in his downtime. To have all of his detailed recollections be aimed at her made her nervous, she could feel the butterflies taking flight in her stomach and felt a juvenile sense of giddiness in her chest every time Spencer’s eyes met hers. She felt seen, but more importantly she felt _known._

“So I guess we’re both pretty good profilers, huh?” Max smiles as she gazes up at Spencer, her foot resting against his under the table. 

In a swift moment, Spencer quietly pushes himself out of his chair and rounds the kitchen table to sit next to Max, just like they were earlier. His long arm comes to circle around her shoulders and she instinctually moves to rest her head in the crook of his neck. “Definitely a promising young candidate for the BAU” Spencer jokes, pressing a kiss to her temple and picking up the ballpoint pen that lay resting on the table, turning his attention to the still mostly-blank crossword puzzle. 

_Three-letter word for someone or something beautiful._ Spencer bites at the end of his pen before scribbling his answer. 

**M-A-X**

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! if you feel so inclined, leave me some feedback on tumblr!


End file.
